Lenin and the Comintern

I

The first item on the agenda of the Fifth World Congress of the
Communist International reads: "Lenin and the Comintern. On the Basic
Principles and Propaganda of Leninism." This indicates not only a
commitment by the Congress to the spirit of Leninism and a widely
perceivable declaration of the will of the participants to solve all
questions which stand before them in the spirit of true Leninism. This
does not merely indicate that particular problems which have entered
into the focal point of the struggle in the last year of the Communist
International in Central and Western Europe, and which appear later on
in the agenda, should be taken care of from the beginning before the
analysis of the economic situation which fills out its second item.
Certainly the most important task of the present developmental period
of the Communist International, among all of the tasks of the Central
and West European and American Communists, consists in the task
assigned us by Lenin: "conquering the majority of the most important
strata of the working classes." Moreover, this task which is not yet
resolved can only be truly solved in the spirit of Leninism: that is,
concretely in the spirit of those "consequences" which Lenin derived in
a most impressive manner at the end of his classic writing on
Radicalism-the infantile sickness of communism-out of the history of
the Russian Bolsheviks and out of the experiences of the European
parties. "The main task of contemporary communism in Western Europe and
America" lies today, in the year 1924, just as Lenin expressed it four
years ago, after three years of the so-called united front tactics, now
even more obviously than then, in "finding, feeling, and realizing the
concrete plan of the not yet entirely revolutionary measures and
methods which will lead
the masses to a real, decisive, last great
revolutionary struggle." But the solution of this practical main task
of the Leninists is relevant to an entire row of items on the agenda,
and no single one in particular, and only in this sense does it also
serve all other tasks with this first item, which speaks of the
"Fundamentals and Propaganda of Leninism." It comes down to the
following: Today the entire Comintern, after the shattering event of
the death of its great founder and leader, V. I. Lenin, can now first
show, and must, that it is able and willing to take on the inheritance
of Lenin, both theoretically
and ideologically, to preserve, to
enliven, and to further develop in the present situation the "spirit"
of Lenin in its theory and praxis as historical reality, as Leninism.
Thus in this manner the Comintern must replace the dead Lenin in his
theoretical ideological function through a large powerful collective of
living Leninists.[1]

In setting "Lenin and the Comintern" on the agenda of the Fifth
World Congress, the executive committee has declared before the entire
world that towards the fulfillment of this great task-a wholly colossal
task that has never before in world history been set before a party in
this form-not only the natural main inheritors of Lenin, the Russian
Bolshevik party, but all the other sections of our great Communist
party, the Communist International, should theoretically and
practically work together. And the Congress itself will have to take
the first important steps down this path; its task will be, clearly and
completely and in detail, to formulate the slogans of the "Propaganda
of Leninism" (which in the agenda are only indeterminately indicated)
in a manner valid for the entire Comintern; to point each section of
the International to the particularly important individual tasks
according to their situation and their state of development, and to
determine the larger guiding principles by which the solution of all
these tasks is to be carried out.

But the importance of the first item on the agenda of the Fifth
World Congress extends much further. One should make clear to oneself
that with the closer determination of the manifold partial tasks out of
which the "Propaganda of Leninism" is composed, the Congress will have
taken a position with regard to the question of "Leninism" only
according to the, if we may express it so, technical side, Obviously,
this technical side of the question also has an inordinately large
importance: The "Propaganda of Leninism" constitutes an important part
of the great Communist total task of the "Organization of the
Revolution." And, of course the fulfillment of precisely this
propagandistic task shows itself to be in those sections of the
Communist International which have not yet won state power (that is,
therefore, in all European and American sections already under legal,
but probably at first under illegal conditions) inordinately more
difficult than in the proletarian Soviet Union. In those lands it will
therefore, for the most part, have to take on entirely different
forms-exactly conforming to the particular situation of each land -
which by all means need a more precise explication and determination
through the highest organ of the Communist International, the world
Congress, But these more or less technical questions comprise in no way
the kernel of the matter.

In reality the method
of the Bolshevik theory as such is placed on
the agenda by the inclusion of the question, "Lenin and the Comintern,
On the Fundamentals and the Propaganda of Leninism." Through the
clarification of the “Basic Principles of Leninism," and the
development of a system of Leninistic propaganda based on these
principles in all sections of the Communist International, the entire
Comintern should be smelted ideologically into one firm unity, on the
common basis of the revolutionary
Marxian method in that form which the
theoretician of Bolshevism Lenin, "restored" it and oppose it to the
falsification and confusions of the so-called Marxists of the united
Second International. The third item of the agenda, the
Program of the Communist International, as well as the method of our revolutionary
Bolshevist theory, is placed before debate in the question of
"Leninism."

II

Will the Fifth World Congress be able to solve this immensely
important, but at the same time immensely difficult task? Will it be
able to formulate the methodological
fundamentals of Leninism so
sharply and correctly that a methodical and systematic Leninistic
propaganda can be constructed on this basis? Will the process of
ideological unification within the Communist International have
progressed enough to allow all sections and groups of the Comintern to
unite in a commitment to one theoretical method which in its essential
features is identical for all?

Here immense difficulties arise which nearly exclude a radical
solution of the task. On the one hand, we cannot yet at all speak of a
unitary commitment in the various sections of the Communist
International, and particularly in the German Communist party, to
"Leninism" as "the" sole valid method of Marxian theory. On the other
hand, in relation to the question, in what the essence of "Leninism" as
a method consists, (even among those who count themselves as Leninist),
there exist presently several views which depart from one another in
essential features. A large number of leading and other Marxian
theoreticians who belong to the organization of the Communist
International and are prepared in their practical politics to act
"according to Lenin," soundly reject in theory the principle of the
method of Lenin as "the" restored method of "scientific Marxism." They
recognize the Leninist method as one method of orientation, sufficient
for the practical-political purposes of the proletarian class struggle
in the present period (that is, in a period which in international
scope and in European and American national scope, does not yet
represent the period of the
seizure of political power) - but do not
recognize it as the most concrete and truest method of materialistic
dialectics, as the restored method of revolutionary Marxism. For them
the valid method is either the method of the founder of the German
Communist party, Rosa Luxemburg, or they declare the Leninist as well
as the Luxemburgian method to be one-sided, and want to recognize only
the method applied by Karl Marx in his scientific period of maturity as
the true Marxian method. It is not possible in this short essay to even
begin a thorough debate with these absolute opponents of the Leninist
method (as one, or "the" method of scientific Marxism). This task shall
be taken up in the following issues of this journal in the collective
work of as large a circle of Communist theoreticians as possible. For
the present we suffice ourselves with the observation that the
political praxis of Bolshevism and the restored form of revolutionary
Marxian theory (by Lenin) builds such an indivisible cohesive whole
that we are not able to see how, for example, one can bring it about to
take, in regard to the role of the Communist party for the proletarian
revolution, as "practical politician," the Communist standpoint on the
resolution of the Second World Congress, and simultaneously as
"scientific Marxist" to comprehend the relationship between the
economic development and the proletarian class struggle in the specific
Luxumburgian form of the dialectical materialist method. It seems to us
that solely from the standpoint of the wholly "materialistic"
materialism of Marx, "restored" by Lenin and advanced one step further,
which also comprehends human
sensuous activity and praxis as such in
its objectifying reality,
can the Bolshevist version of the "role of
the party" be recognized. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the
Luxemburgian dialectic, which on its practical side is not nearly so
"materialistic" a dialectic as the Leninist one, there is always a
painful remnant of "subjectivism," as regards the Leninist account of
the role of the party. But be this as it may, so much seems clear: a
resolution on the "Basic principles of Leninism," and a system of
"Leninist Propaganda," which could be collectively agreed upon at the
Fifth World Congress by Luxemburgian and Leninistic Marxists (to this
must be added, thirdly, those Marxists who recognize neither the
Luxernburgian further development nor the Leninistic restoration of the
Marxian method as genuine and complete Marxism) would unavoidably
remain just as unsatisfactory as a Communist program overwhelmingly
agreed upon by these same theoreticians for the entire Communist
International. The complete clarification of the relation between the
Luxemburgian and the Leninistic methods of Marxian theory comprises the
indispensable presuppositions for the determination of the "Basic
Principles and Propaganda of Leninism."

Irrespective of the conflict between the Luxemburgians and the
Leninists, there exists no general agreement today on the question of
the essence of Leninism as a theoretical method; or stronger, this
agreement exists today even less than previously. And it is also
entirely understandable that, at a time when as the consequence of an
acute crisis the most important questions of Bolshevik praxis have
become the object of a bitter factional controversy, the question of
the theoretical method of Leninism has also to be pulled into the
maelstrom of the struggle, for the methodological consciousness of a
Marxian-Communist party does not stand outside of, or in any sense
above, the praxis of the party, but rather builds an important
constituent of this revolutionary praxis itself. We should therefore
not wonder that we find again in the presently undertaken attempts at a
determination of the methods of Leninist dialectics-undertaken by
various sides-all the factions which today also practically oppose one
another in the struggle over tactics and other practical-political
questions inside the Comintern. Particularly interesting in this regard
is an essay by the comrade Thalheimer, "On the Application of the
Materialistic Dialectic by Lenin in Some Questions of the Proletarian
Revolution," which appeared in volumes 1/2 of the new Communist journal
Arbeiterliteratur.

III

Comrade Thalheimer wants to explicate the Leninist method, which
according to him is nothing but the same Marxist method of materialist
dialectics which Lenin applied with the same boldness and with the same
foresight and exactness as Marx himself. He shall do this by the
development of three particular questions: the question of proletarian
dictatorship; the agrarian question, and the question of the
nationalist and imperialist wars. The section on the question of the
dictatorship ends with the statement that Lenin characterized the
Soviet form of the state not as "the finally discovered political form"
of the dictatorship of the working class, but rather only as "a new
type" of state in which the possibility of deviating "species,
varieties, forms" of this type is contained. The section on the
agrarian question explains that Lenin, by his treatment of this
question, has given "a particularly instructive and exact application
of the materialist-dialectical method." (This application consists,
according to Thalheimer's portrayal, in the fact that Lenin, in order
to save the kernel of the matter of the proletarian revolution-that is,
the transfer of the political power to the proletariat-allowed to let
fall all "rigid" demands of the previous Bolshevist agrarian program
and trust that in the course of "life" everything else would find
itself "by itself" "as the result of the power of example, as the
result of practical considerations.") In the third and last section
Comrade Thalheimer characterizes Lenin's treatment of the national
question as "a true model of concrete dialectical analysis." For Lenin,
on the one hand, critically destroyed the falsifications of social
patriotism, and on the other hand also stressed that under certain
conditions even in Europe during the World War the transformation of
the imperialist war into a nationalist war would be to be sure, "not
probable" but was certainly nonetheless "theoretically not impossible."

It lies far from us to want to stand back even by one hair's breadth
from the admiration with which Comrade Thalheimer appraises Lenin's
solution to these three important and difficult questions. We must,
however, very seriously raise this question: To what extent has Lenin
in his treatment of these questions as portrayed by Comrade
Thalheimer
given such "particularly" instructive and exact model examples of the
application of the materialist method of Marxism? In what, for example,
consists the particularly instructive and exact use of the materialist
dialectical method in the Leninist approach to the agrarian question?
Karl Marx also, as is known, recognized the capability of the
revolutionary class, as soon as they had raised themselves, "to find
immediately
in their own situation the content and the material of
their revolutionary activity: to strike down enemies, to seize measures
given by the need of war, to carry forward the consequences of their
own deeds. They set no theoretical undertakings above their own tasks"
(Class Struggles in
France, Dietzsche edition, p. 31). The
theoreticians and practitioners of the Russian Revolution could trust
in the middle of the struggle to the immanent, unconscious and natural
dialectic with the same right which permeates in "life" and in the
revolutionary class struggle as a part of this life "from itself." But
does he apply the dialectical method here, precisely where he (to speak
with Marx) "denies theoretical undertakings"? Does he apply the
dialectic thereby in a "particularly instructive" and "particularly
exact" form?

We suggest, rather, that to the contrary, precisely the position is
reached where the highly developed materialist dialectic, which
according to its conception of the historical process of the
proletarian revolution should be fully comprehended, reaches its limit,
where the concrete historical process in its material living reality,
to be sure, proceeds dialectically but at a certain point in the course
of its process cannot be grasped by the dialectician, It belongs to the
requirements of an exact theory of the Marxian method not to ignore the
existence of this limit; but it is already too much when one wants
precisely to see in this the actual kernel of the
"materialist dialectics" of Marx and Lenin. Similarly, although in another way,
Comrade Thalheimer constructs his two other chosen examples of Lenin's
application of the Marxian method in a way which certainly belong to a
true materialism, and in no sense to any metaphysical methodology, but
nonetheless, for heaven's sake, does not make up the innermost essence
of this dialectical materialist method, the main feature and the kernel
of materialism, of Marxism and Leninism generally. And to this
distortion of the essence of the Marxist-Leninist method, which he
accomplishes concretely in his three examples, he further adds, in the
introduction and in scattered remarks in his essay, an equally
contorted general theory of the essence of this method. He exaggerates
the Marxian basic principle that the truth is always concrete into the
caricature that the results
of materialist dialectical thought in Lenin
as well as Marx could not at all, never, and in no form generally be
valid beyond the momentary realm of experience out of which it is
derived and for which it is determined-as if Marx (e.g, in his letter
to Michailowski) and Lenin (e.g., in the introduction to "Radicalism,"
which has the subtitle: "In what form can one speak of the
international importance of the Russian Revolution?") had not very
exactly distinguished
between those results of their
materialist dialectical research which have such general importance and those which
do not. What then is a "materialistic-dialectical" method worth which
gives us nothing more than that which in some sense reaches out beyond
the already known present experience? Or further, as Thalheimer
expresses it, brings forth nothing more than historical results,
on the one side theoretical reflections (!), analysis of a particular time, on
the other only guidelines for the struggle of the proletariat,
"likewise in a particular time"?

In reality this new method, created by Comrade Thalheimer and
transformed out of the Marxist-Leninist materialist dialectic, has
nothing more to do with the materialist dialectics. In his efforts to
grasp the materialist methodology of Marx and Lenin totally
"materially," as a method of a pure historical science of experience
and practice, Comrade Thalheimer has already overstepped the limits of
that which one can call materialist dialectics, and has achieved a
completely undialectical historicism, positivism, and practicism. While
Rosa Luxemburg, as we have indicated above, in her version of human
praxis has not wholly become materialistic, and in this one respect has
remained a Hegelian dialectician, Comrade Thalheimer, on the contrary,
has driven out with the remains of the Hegelian dialectic at the same
time everything dialectical in the methodology of Marxian science; the
materialist dialectical method of Marx, which essentially is the
concrete comprehension of the proletarian revolution as historical
process and as a historical action of the proletarian class, transforms
itself in Thalheimer into a merely passive, ideological "reflection" of
solitary historical factuality’s diverse in time and place.

This theoretical falsification of the essence of the
Marxist-Leninist dialectical method leads practically to a devaluation
of all the results won by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others through these
methods. And it is fairly easy to see where this tendency towards the
devaluation of the results of the Marxist-Leninist research method has
come from and where it leads. Let us take the example, repeated a
hundred times by Thalheimer that the Soviet state is characterized by
Lenin only as a type with possible varieties and species. One can
devalue the results of the Marxist-Leninist methodology so much only
when one, whether consciously or unconsciously, wants to disengage
oneself from these results. The conception of the Soviet
state, as only one type of proletarian dictatorship, with a multiplicity of possible
forms, makes it possible for the theoretician of "Leninism" to
disengage himself from the "rigid" form of the council dictatorship
(which is, according to Lenin, capable of further development, but is
even so, "the" beginning of "the" socialistic form, of democracy!) and
reach the various possible "species, varieties" and degenerations of
this "type," for example, the Saxony "workers' government." And
likewise with all other "results" of the Marxist and Leninist theory.
If they all are purely "historical creations," bound to their
particular historical presuppositions, applicable only to the relation
of a particular time and land, then it is self-evident that under new
relations, against new experiences, and changed political needs all of
these previous "results" of Marxism would lose their validity and could
and must be replaced by new knowledge and guidelines, in which these
new situations now "are reflected" for the "Leninist" application of
the materialist dialectic. In transforming the revolutionary
dialectical materialism of Marx and Lenin into a no longer dialectical
and therefore also no longer revolutionary (and the converse: no longer
revolutionary and thus also no longer dialectical), purely historical,
empirical science and practice, Comrade Thalheimer posits
under the seductive clothing of "Leninism" actually a method which by
tendency is opportunistic
and reformistic
in place of the revolutionary method of Marxism.

IV

We have treated Thalheimer's conception of the Leninist method with
such detail not only because Comrade Thalheimer has been named as the
second speaker on the "question of the program" at the Fifth World
Congress, and thus for that reason will be heard at the Congress with
particular attention on the question of the essence of Leninism as
methodology. More importantly, it was crucial to show by a typical
example, in detail and clearly, that the attempt of a determination of
the "Basic Principles of Leninism," and particularly a fixing of the
essence of the Leninist method at the Fifth World Congress is hound up
not only with great present difficulties, but beyond this also with
certain dangers which are all the greater in so far as they remain very
much unrecognized and unwatched precisely in this seemingly purely
theoretical region, far removed from the practical struggle of the
factions. Recently there have been attempts to smuggle in under the
revered, revolutionary flag of "Leninism," various revisionistic,
reformistic, opportunistic and liquidating contraband in the praxis and
the theory of revolutionary communism. And in its
innermost foundation
the theory of Leninist method which Thalheimer has now formulated
signifies only a false theory of a false political praxis. Just as the
opportunist and reformist united front tactic is related to the
revolutionary method of agitation and mass mobilization applied in
Germany since the Leipzig Party Congress, so does the "Leninist" method
of Thalheimer and his close comrades relate to the genuine method of
revolutionary Leninism, that is to the dialectical method of
revolutionary Marxism completed and restored by Lenin. The Fifth World
Congress, in the explication of the fundamentals of this position, will
have to erect particular protective
walls against the rising flood of
communist revisionism in the questions of the program and
in the question of the Basic
Principles of Leninism, just as with all other,
immediately practical questions of Communist politics. By the
fulfillment of this negative
function it can powerfully counteract the
threatening collapse of the completed method of revolutionary Marxist
science restored by Lenin, which in its essence is nothing other than
the theoretical consciousness of the revolutionary actions of the
proletarian class. For a positive
fixation of the essence of Leninism
as method,
the present moment in the development of the Comintern is
just as little appropriate as for the fixation of a final Communist
program,
valid for an entire epoch of Communist politics.

Note

[1] More on this can be
found in the last section of Zinoviev's
essay, "V. I. Lenin--Genius, Teacher, Leader, and Human," nos. 31/32 of
KI, and in a special essay by Bela Kun, "The Propaganda of Leninism,"
in no. 33.